Law

After years of a protracted battle against Uganda’s “bride price” practice, the country’s Supreme Court this week ruled that husbands can no longer demand that it be returned in the event of dissolution of a customary marriage but has stopped short of declaring the practice itself unconstitutional.

Morocco stands divided over a proposal for equal inheritance rights for men and women: modernists see this as application of equality arising from the new constitution, and Islamists see in this a violation of Sharia law.

L. Khino, 27, vividly remembers Christmas Eve at the Indian capital’s famed Connaught Place shopping hub four years ago: the blinking lights, the buzzing crowd, the winter chill - and the salty taste of her tears.

Taiwan’s national legislature has taken a small but important step to curb rampant government surveillance of citizens and politicians through revisions of the Communication Security and Surveillance Act and the criminal code.

Myanmar is flinging open the gates to foreign investment, seen as key to the southeast Asian country's future after decades of stagnation under military rule. From Coca-Cola and Unilever to Samsung and Fujitsu, the key brands of international companies can be seen hogging billboards.

Ashik Rehman, 47, worked as a labourer in the southern Indian state of Kerala. He left for Saudi Arabia two years ago, hoping to earn enough to buy a house in his native place. Now he is back and staring at a bleak future.

A new policy by the Pakistani government to regulate foreign-funded non-governmental organisations (NGOs) has come in for sharp criticism from the social sector, with many saying it could stifle rights-based groups and affect crucial services provided to the needy.

Demonstrations have been at the heart of historic upheavals in Egypt since January 2011. But a newly proposed law that seeks to regulate protests could imperil one of the biggest gains of the Arab Spring revolution here: freedom of expression.

A “virus” of restrictive abortion legislation is spreading from Eastern Europe, health experts and rights campaigners have said, amid Church pressure and misguided government attempts to stop falling birth rates.

Once more, Swiss voters have lashed out against asylum seekers, further tightening the country's already strict asylum law. The government has meanwhile announced a radical restructuring of the asylum procedure.

After one of the six males under trial for the rape and subsequent death of a 23-year-old woman was deemed an adolescent and therefore entitled to leniency, juvenile rights activists have found themselves pitted against irate members of the public demanding death sentences for all the perpetrators.

The end of Taiwan’s most controversial death penalty case this week has “punctured the myth that the judicial system never makes mistakes in death penalty cases,” Judicial Reform Foundation (JRF) executive director Lin Feng-cheng told IPS.